Barcelona Faces Key Tests on and off the Field

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Lionel Messi sent a free kick into a wall of Atlético Madrid players during the first leg of their Champions League quarterfinal in Barcelona on April 1. The teams played to a 1-1 tie.CreditLluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

LONDON — The past seven days have eaten away at the claim that F.C. Barcelona is more than just a club. The next seven days will go some way to determining the team’s response, on and off the field.

“We are a team made to attack and score goals,” Barcelona’s captain, Xavi Hernández, said at a news conference ahead of Wednesday’s quarterfinal second leg at Atlético Madrid. “We will go there full of motivation and spirit to win against a team that is just the opposite to us. We must try to get ahead, which we have not done in any of the four games against them. Then we would see how they react — that could be the key to the game.”

Fighting talk, as you would expect from Xavi. He enrolled at Barça’s academy, La Masia, when he was 11. Now 34, he is the pivotal orchestrator on the senior side he has played more than 700 competitive matches for.

Win or bust in Vicente Calderón stadium against a team that tries to win at all costs is the essence of Wednesday’s game. The tally stands at 1-1 after the first leg in Barcelona, and as Xavi implied, neither side has been able to get the better of the other in four matches already this season.

This is a must-win situation, even if it comes down to penalty kicks at the end.

Yet it is only one match in a crowded week. Come Saturday, both Atlético and Barça will be trying for points in La Liga, the title coming down to those two or Real Madrid. And next Wednesday, Barcelona meets Real in the final of the Copa del Rey, the third trophy of Spanish importance.

Playing on three fronts, with injuries ruling out Barcelona goalkeeper Victor Valdés and the central defenders Carles Puyol and Gerard Piqué, puts the emphasis, if it were possible, even more on attack.

But Barcelona is contesting more than the games. Last Saturday, the club held only the second referendum of its members in its history. There are more than 116,000 members — called socios. They are the ultimate owners of a club that represents Catalonia, and a third of them cast their votes to decide whether to go ahead with a project that will revamp and expand the aging Camp Nou stadium.

For older members, it will reshape the future beyond their time as active supporters. Some said that they were voting for a project they might never see — in fact defining the future for their sons and daughters.

More than two-thirds of the 37,535 who exercised their voting rights were in favor of keeping Camp Nou rather than building a new stadium. The renovation will cost almost half a billion euros, or about $700 million, and temporarily reduce the seating capacity.

Who can tell the future?

For much of the past decade, Barcelona has played football that most of the world can only admire, or envy.

The story of La Masia is classic: how it took in a small and sick Argentine boy, Lionel Messi, when he was 13 and his family could not afford the cost of his medicine for growth hormone deficiency.

Parents the world over might wish Leo were their son — and not just because of his worth today.

Clubs have exploited a Spanish law forbidding teams there to sign youths professionally until they turn 16. Arsenal stole Cesc Fábregas at that age. And later, when Barça wanted him back, Arsenal put a price of 35 million pounds, or almost $60 million, on the man that Fábregas became in London.

I mentioned envy. One is bound to wonder whether it is coincidence that Barcelona is now in dire trouble with various authorities.

There have been revelations concerning Messi’s tax payments and the Brazilian Neymar’s salary, both of which reached the Spanish courts.

Sandro Rosell, the former Nike employee who became Barcelona president, quit his post in the fallout of the Neymar affair.

Now, coincidental or not, FIFA has accused Barcelona of breaching regulations in signing foreign minors under the age of 18.

FIFA’s investigation, set off by an unnamed complainant, involves 10 boys. Some are identified because rival teams try to emulate Arsenal’s plunder of Fábregas.

There is one Barça boy they would all like. He is Lee Seung-woo, sometimes referred to as the South Korean Messi.

He recently turned 16, and has committed himself to Barcelona.

Not a poor choice, given that he has been there since he was 11. He has received schooling and tuition there. He has learned to play the passing game that has been inculcated into so many youngsters, including Pep Guardiola, Xavi, Messi and Andrés Iniesta.

For breaching the rule on signing foreign minors, FIFA intends to bar Barcelona from signing players in two transfer windows — effectively a ban on recruitment until 2015.

One thing that could happen if FIFA’s big stick prevails is that Barça youths get promoted faster from within.

Another is that it would crush the hope, and the already negotiated agreement, of players who have informed their present clubs they will join Barça this summer.

Barcelona intends to fight, if necessary, all the way to the European court of sports arbitration. Its case is that it offers exemplary education, it breaches no civil law and it makes every effort to integrate the boys (and sometimes their parents) into society.

FIFA indeed has a duty to protect minors. Stories of agents sweeping up South Americans and Africans later found abandoned on the street in Brussels and elsewhere grew into accusations of child trafficking.

Barcelona’s holistic approach is not that. Like many others, the club hunts talent where it can find it. If I had a gifted child and could choose the best place to give him the opportunity, Barcelona might top my list. In fact, I would never leave a child in another country on the off chance of a sporting career. The pitfalls are too many, from injury to the fact that children often outgrow adolescent fantasies.

But it is intriguing that, the day after FIFA announced its ban on Barça, two Spanish rivals — Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid — came under investigation regarding transfers of foreign youths.